Art crime occurs across all times and cultures. This chapter seeks to examine the nature of art crime, and responses to it, in indigenous communities, using as an extensive and detailed case study the example of Māori society in New Zealand. Whilst there will inevitably be differences in differing communities and circumstances, the histories and lessons learnt from a detailed examination of the Māori experience can inform others who interact with indigenous art in similar settings and with similar or analogous histories. The chapter begins by briefly identifying art crimes as embedded in oral histories and then our responses to this such as the taua muru (plundering party). With the arrival of Europeans from the late eighteenth century, art crime changed to encompass looting during times of armed conflict, specifically in the 1820s and 1860s, as well as a rise in illicit antiquities. The last section of the chapter brings the discussion into the present day, and examines ways in which Māori are reuniting with their past through ongoing and meaningful relationships with their returned taonga (treasures), as well as with museums and other sites that continue to hold major collections of them, both here and overseas.2 It also reviews some of the main issues in relation to human remains in the United States and Canada.
Māori are the indigenous people of New Zealand. Our history can be traced through a number of different complementary approaches. According to archaeologists and Māori oral history, Pacific peoples began arriving in this country from around 1200 in a series of migrations. Over time they organised themselves into iwi (tribes), hapū (sub-tribes) and whānau (family) groupings, a structure which has remained to the present day. Another part of our story comes from our oral histories of Te Pō (The Night), the time before Ranginui (Sky Father) and Papatūānuku (Earth Mother). From here many Māori can trace 50 generations to our people today. Both histories are seen as intertwining.
After several centuries, Europeans arrived, rupturing many, though not all, aspects of Māori life. In 1840 the Treaty of Waitangi was signed between many iwi and the British Crown, and on this basis there was a rapid increase in new settlers from England. Within a generation there was wide-scale resistance by iwi frustrated at ongoing settler encroachment onto their tribal lands, with little support from a newly formed government, which, notably, had no Māori representatives. This series of conflicts (commonly called the New Zealand Wars) was followed by extensive land confiscation, in tandem with other governmental policies which quickly saw many iwi disenfranchised. Māori pushed back around the turn of the twentieth century via newly appointed Māori representatives in Parliament and other iwi leaders, but ongoing governmental policies and prejudice has meant that many whānau remain in crisis in relation to education, employment, justice, housing and health. Today there are over 100 tribes, and we form 14 per cent of the population. We remain resilient through this history of colonisation, thanks in no small part to the ongoing importance of taonga tuku iho in our lives.
The term taonga tuku iho can be translated as ‘treasures handed down through the generations’ and involves a number of important tikanga (beliefs or protocols). These include mana (power), tapu (sacredness) and korero (talk, discussion). These surround the treasures and imbue them with ihi, wehi and wana. These treasures are considered to be living, with biographies which chart their names and their histories throughout time. He toi whakairo, he mana tangata – Where there is artistic excellence, there is human dignity.
Our records of art crime before the time of writing with the pen come from oral histories handed down through the generations. Through these we know that theft was punished in a number of ways depending on what was taken, and who it was taken from. Oral accounts corroborate actions described by early European observers, in that if the thief was a prisoner-of-war he would be beaten and sometimes killed; if he was a chief different punishments would be considered, such as a pātere (derisive song) being composed to remember the hara (sin) that had been done. Thieves would sometimes be strung up publicly after being killed to remind community members that law-breaking would not be tolerated.
Within Māori tradition, there operated a culture-specific form of dispute resolution. Called a taua muru (plundering party), this functioned to deal with general disputes arising from a number of incidents, ranging from wandering stock, to domestic violence, adultery and kidnapping, or even the refusal to join a taua or war expedition.3 These acted to deprive a whānau or hapū, and would involve occupation of a community and the removal of all their movable property, and the destruction of immovable property, such as houses or canoes. If this did not bring satisfaction, it would escalate into a taua toto, where the goal was to get as much blood (toto) as possible. This might result in the killing of hundreds, if not thousands, with equal numbers being taken as prisoners-of-war. This continued through the 1820s and the practice only slowly died out in the 1870s.
Looting was an accepted part of Māori warfare. Māori had specific names for loot – parakete and hau – and names for plundering: muru, kōhunu, parurenga and pāhua. Loot would include weapons, dress cloaks, items of personal adornment, tools and implements. Sometimes named people would be sought out, such as well-known artists, as well as chiefly women. At times communities would hide their treasures, especially large carved structures, by burying them in riverbeds or hiding them in caves. Many of these have been subsequently lost either because those who knew their whereabouts were killed, or the site was destroyed or otherwise compromised, such as a shifted riverbed. In order to appease a warring party, or subsequent to their defeat, a community might build a meeting house or a war canoe and either deliver it to their victors or invite them to come for a formal clearing-the-air ceremony.
At times, war expeditions were launched specifically to obtain famous taonga. One well-known example is the taua launched by the Ngati Tuwharetoa iwi of the central North Island. When they stormed the Ngati Kahungunu Te Aratipi pā in 1820 they deliberately sought out the mere pounamu (greenstone cleavers) named Pahi-kaure and Kai-arero in order to take them home with them. Looting of human remains as part of warfare was well known and widely practised in New Zealand and considered to be a spoil of war. Frequently heads, called Toi moko, would be removed from slain enemies, particularly chiefs, and publicly demeaned once back in the victor’s settlement. In other cases slain enemies would be dismembered on site. Their bones would be made into objects like koauau (bone instruments), the heads of bird spears, the barbs of fish-hooks and pins for holding dress cloaks together. Making everyday items out of the body of a chief would demean the mana (prestige) of the slain person even further, especially if the object made was used in relation to food, which further humiliated the enemy in terms of their personal tapu (sacredness).
Such ritual ceremonies continued through the 1860s and 1870s as they were such an important aspect of traditional warfare. One outstanding example is the koauau, fish-hooks, forks, poria kaka (pet parrot rings) and other items made from the arm-bone of Peka Makarini, of Ngati Manawa. Peka had been a bugler of Te Kooti Arikirangi, mentioned later, and responsible for the deaths of a number of Māori and Pākehā (non-Māori). He was eventually found and killed in 1870, when this koauau was made by someone from Ngati Pahauwera and passed on to Gilbert Mair at Te Haroto in 1874.4
With the hunger for muskets, Toi moko took on a commodity value, particularly in Northland, with the heads of slain enemies being returned to the victor’s settlement for sale. They were considered not to be people but as booty and as such exchangeable for weapons. This grisly trade continued for several years and extended to Sydney where many Māori journeyed to buy first-hand muskets, as the missionaries became increasingly hesitant about supporting this trade. In at least one case, the prisoner-of-war was selected whilst alive by the purchaser, usually a European captain with access to muskets from England, and subsequently received a moko (tattoo) on his face. Once his wounds had healed, he was killed and his head preserved and sold. This trade was outlawed in the 1830s but continued underground until at least the 1850s.
Warfare in the nineteenth century took an entirely different turn from previous battles, primarily because there was a new enemy (Europeans) and new technology (muskets). Due to both of these factors, the nineteenth century can be considered to be one of the most militarised in Māori history. Looting described above increased and resulted in many taonga tuku iho being removed from their communities. The goal for Māori was to belittle their enemy, but for Pākehā the intention was to acquire a trophy of war. The differences were no doubt related to different rules of engagement that guided the theatres of war; each was historically based and socially framed in terms of the norms of the day. Māori frequently targeted larger carved objects – the chief’s house, the pataka (a raised, carved storehouse) and the waka taua (war canoes) – which were socially and politically aligned with a specific chief and hapū. These would often be singled out and dismantled and returned to the home of the victors. At other times they would be targeted and totally destroyed, because of what they represented. Heavily carved war canoes were particularly highly sought after as loot. Not only were they powerful icons of a community, but they also had a valuable practical function of being able to move large groups of warriors from one place to another.
Often smaller treasures, particularly items of personal adornment and weapons, were left by Māori in abandoning a site or in the midst of travelling. These were frequently picked up by European soldiers and tucked into their knapsacks, often passed down through the generations. At the Battle of Ruapekapeka in Northland in 1846, the hapū group of Ngati Hine fled in the face of 1,300 British soldiers and volunteers who stormed their pā (fortified settlements). While occupying the site over the next few days, a number of items were ‘found’ on the battlefield including a hei tiki (a greenstone neck adornment in the form of a human) now in Auckland War Memorial Museum.
There are also numerous instances of whare whakairo (decorated meeting houses) being looted. Owned by chiefs, these were symbols of chieftainship and often targeted. Early accounts from a range of different locations and times refer to the wholesale destruction of these structures by burning, or disassembling of the buildings and removal of smaller carvings, by Māori and European soldiers alike. In doing so they sought to demean the power of the chief and destabilise the strength of the local community. This was particularly powerful given that a meeting house was often named after important ancestors to whom all locals could trace their genealogy. Indeed, the house was conceived metaphorically as the ancestor, and so its destruction was the death in many ways again of that same ancestor, a very harmful act for the local community. Waka taua were also targeted. Having the same symbolism as the meeting house – conceived as an important ancestor – their destruction or disestablishment was also painful for the local people.
Looting, however, did not end with the final bullet. Rather, another cycle of looting arose with the subsequent confiscation – raupatu – of land and taonga. The New Zealand Government legalised this under the New Zealand Settlements Act of 1863, which was fast-tracked through parliament, and resulted in over 1.3 million hectares (3.2 million acres) being taken from iwi and invariably given to settlers. This was overseen by Native Land Purchase Agents who invariably were the same men who had led major military campaigns. Many also were moonlighting as agents ex officio for the earliest museums which were being built at this time in the late 1860s. It is no surprise that these institutions were soon filling quickly with taonga, which were being gifted by soldiers and officials, as well as being ‘acquired’ from others, including these Native Land Purchase Agents.
At this same time, private collectors began actively searching for Māori objects, using their contacts, money and influence. Walter Buller, for instance, was named Native Commissioner for the Southern Provinces, enabling him to travel extensively throughout the country, collecting as he went. Taonga records indicate that several of the objects in his extensive collection were listed as having been ‘picked up’ or ‘dug up’. I suspect that many, if not most, collections of taonga from the nineteenth century have similar entries. Certainly Jade Tangiahua Baker’s discussion of Crown war booty notes a Waka Huia (chiefly container) belonging to Gilbert Mair as being ‘Taken at Te Teko 1865’.5 Mair’s collection indeed is filled with other such taonga with ambiguous histories. A new term I have seen used in records at Auckland War Memorial Museum is ‘souvenired’, which presumes that the collector was out on some cheerful holiday in the sun, rather than scrounging around families desperate for any cash. The language of removal is certainly loaded and provides very little information about the circumstances of abstraction.
Probably the most well-known example of raupatu in action is the illegal acquisition of the meeting house Te Hau ki Turanga in 1867. Built in the early 1840s by Ngati Kaipoho chief Rakaruhi Rukupo to honour his recently departed brother, it is the earliest surviving example of a house with full decoration inside and out. A generation later, and the house was spied by J.C. Richmond, who was simultaneously the informal Minister of Native Affairs, as well as the acting director of the Colonial Museum. Richmond was in the area holding confiscation-related meetings with local Māori. At this stage Te Hau ki Turanga was located in Orakaiapu Pa, which had been left as the local hapū relocated elsewhere. Rukupo was in an impossible situation – on the one hand here was a colonial agent investigating how much land should be forfeited to the Crown, and from where, and on the other that same person was asking about the meeting house. Conflicting stories surround the exact circumstances of the removal of Te Hau ki Turanga, but it is now clear that Rukupo at no time gave his consent – in any event, he could not have done as he argued the house was communally owned, and not his to give away. The house was very quickly dismantled and shipped to Wellington, to the Museum, where it has resided ever since.
‘Koia tēnei; ko te toroa noho au, E tangi ana ki tōna kainga, e mihi ana’ (This is a fact; I live like the albatross, Crying out to its nesting place, and greeting you [in sorrow]). These words spoken by Hamiora Tumutara Pio, paramount chief of Ngati Awa, underline some of the emotion felt by Ngati Awa in the late 1860s, and underscores the people’s pain following the illegal removal of their meeting house Mataatua. This whare was built in 1873–5 by the Ngati Awa chief Wepiha Apanui of Whakatane in the Bay of Plenty in order to bring harmony and unity to his people, who were feeling the sting of the confiscation of 99,000 hectares (245,000 acres) of their tribal land in 1866. Just like with Te Hau ki Turanga, the tribe were approached by the Crown, in the form here of the magistrate based in the main town of Opotiki. He asked for the house as a showpiece of Māori culture to be put on display at the British Empire Exhibition in Sydney in 1879. Apanui reluctantly agreed, though his people were not happy. Again, the house was quickly dismantled and shipped to Australia where it stayed for two years, ultimately ending up in Otago Museum in Dunedin in the South of New Zealand by the 1920s.
Conflict between Māori and Pākehā did not end with the New Zealand Wars. Rather, the colonial government became more intolerant of Māori seeking to retain their sovereignty in various ways. Buoyed by their actions following the wars, and with increasing pressure from settlers for land, they took a harsh line against any Māori who sought to remain sovereign. This led inevitably to a number of armed encounters at the behest of the government, frequently led by kupapa (Māori government soldiers) fresh from the frontiers of the 1860s. The 1870s was focused on the chase of the religious leader Te Kooti Arikirangi Te Turuki around the country. Wrongly imprisoned on the Chatham Islands, some 780 kilometres (480 miles) east of New Zealand, for ‘rebellious actions’, in July 1868 Te Kooti founded the religion Ringatu and led an escape of 163 men, 64 women and 71 children from the Chathams back to New Zealand. It was during this pursuit that Ringatu communities were ‘systematically sacked and destroyed’.6 As Ngahuia Te Awekotuku and Linda Waimarie Nikora describe in their account of events in the Ngāi Tūhoe tribal region: ‘Of one, at Tauaki near Maungapohatu, only the tahuhu [ridgepole] of the wharenui [large house] remains; of the great runanga [meeting] house recorded as being at Matuahu, at Waikaremoana, there is nothing.’ Incoming colonials ransacked homes, as one of the soldiers described: ‘I got some very fine specimens of Māori trappings one figurehead to a Māori war canoe, tomahawk, spear, paddle and some greenstone.’ Te Awekotuku and Nikora argue that this may explain the hundreds of Ngāi Tūhoe tribal taonga in public collections today.7
The last two decades of the nineteenth century were characterised by a rise in illicit antiquities (looting performed during times of peace) and trading in human remains. One of the most well-known examples of grave robbing was by the Austrian taxidermist Andreas Reischek. Arriving in New Zealand to work at the newly opened Canterbury Museum in Christchurch, he soon found a novel way of undertaking his scientific ‘research’ into Māori – by stealing Māori treasures and human remains. Burial sites across Waikato and Northland were desecrated and his collection numbered in the thousands by the time he returned to Austria.
The illicit taking of taonga has continued through the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. In New Zealand the Motunui Panels case is indicative of ongoing gaps in legislation, both here and overseas, to protect our antiquities. In that case 400-year-old Te Ati Awa tribal pataka panels were discovered in the early 1970s, and later sold to art dealer Lance Entwistle, who exported them to the United States labelled ‘furniture’, and sold them for ten times his original purchase price to well-known ethnographic collector George Ortiz. Due to personal circumstances, in 1978 Ortiz attempted to liquidise some of his collection through the London branch of Sotheby’s auction house. It was soon realised in New Zealand that the panels had been illegally removed from the country in contravention to the Historic Articles Act 1962, and litigation began, resulting in a House of Lords decision confirming ownership in Ortiz as the New Zealand government could not argue for their return if they did not have them in their possession.
Certainly the monetary value of taonga has increased markedly – as with other indigenous heritages – over the past 30 years. Many have attributed this to the exhibition entitled ‘Te Maori: Maori Art from New Zealand Collections’ (1984–7) where, for the first time, taonga were displayed in art galleries, beginning with no less an institution than New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, before moving on to other institutions in Chicago, St Louis and San Francisco, and then returning to New Zealand and being exhibited in the four largest cities. For the first time, the general public came to understand the importance of taonga as conceived as ‘art’ rather than ‘artefact’, and the ongoing significance of these treasures for Māori today as living ancestors. The legacy is that the value of Māori art has increased exponentially, undoubtedly influencing its value at auction in particular, resulting in Māori being unable to afford to purchase such objects back into their communities. While often institutions like Te Papa Tongarewa, New Zealand’s national museum, and Auckland War Memorial Museum have worked in partnership with iwi and hapū in purchasing at auction, many times the taonga move into private hands, our only reprieve being that they have to, by law, reside in New Zealand with registered collectors, and require a permit if they are to be taken overseas for any reason.
So, what is the state of art crime in relation to Māori art today? Theft remains a problem, though this is mostly now from private homes. Some of the items taken are considered to be taonga even though they were not made by Māori: paintings of Māori at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries by Gottfried Lindauer and Charles F. Goldie have been regularly stolen from private homes and a library. Such thefts are no doubt driven by huge prices being achieved at auction for such works – works by Goldie sell for upwards of NZ$700,000, both in New Zealand and in the United Kingdom, representing certainly in New Zealand the top price for a painting at auction. Media profiling of such sales and the ready availability of information about such works, and their prices, through the internet, has made these artists household names, perhaps motivating such thefts.
At times art works have been stolen for political reasons; the prime case in point is the theft of a large painting by one of New Zealand’s most prominent Pākehā painters in the twentieth century, Colin McCahon, in 1995. Featuring the tribal histories of the Ngāi Tūhoe people, The Urewera Mural (1975) was worth NZ$1.2 million when it was removed from its site in the middle of the night. It soon became clear that this act was compelled by political despondency at the apathy shown by the New Zealand government to ongoing calls for Tino Rangatiratanga (sovereignty) by Ngāi Tūhoe people. The painting was returned the following year after a prolonged and complex series of negotiations between Ngāi Tūhoe, a major arts patron and a contentious Auckland lawyer.
The New Zealand government has recently amended its laws protecting the removal and circulation of Māori treasures. In 2006, the Protected Objects Act was passed, signing into law the 1970 UNESCO convention along with that of the 1995 UNIDROIT. The term taonga tūturu was introduced, defined as relating to Māori culture, history or society, made (or appearing to be made) by Māori in New Zealand or brought to New Zealand by Māori, and thirdly being more than 50 years old. The legislation remains problematic for Māori, however, in relation to newly found objects, whose ownership is deemed prima facie to belong to the Crown. Many have argued that this is against the spirit of the Treaty of Waitangi in which New Zealand is a partnership between Māori and the Crown.
For many iwi the repatriation of their cultural heritage remains an essential part of their future. Today, many iwi include these treasures as part of their claims for settlement by the Waitangi Tribunal, a permanent commission of inquiry established by the government in 1975 to ‘examine any claim by a Maori or group of Maori who may have been prejudiced by laws and regulations or by acts, omissions, policies, or practices of the Crown since 1840 that are inconsistent with the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi’.8 Currently there are in excess of 2,000 active claims, many of them basing part of their claims for taonga on the fact that these treasures were meant to have been protected under the Treaty of Waitangi (Article 2). To date the Crown (New Zealand government) has repatriated the meeting houses Te Hau ki Turanga (for Rongowhakaata, Wai 814, 2004) and Mataatua (for Ngati Awa, Wai 46, 1999) as part of their tribal settlements, and there is a call by many tribes for the return of dismantled whare whakairo to their homelands. This is in part facilitated by the Ministry for Culture and Heritage, who are working with museums to provide information to tribes.
For museums, repatriation remains a dirty word, with many in New Zealand seeking alternative strategies to wholesale return of cultural treasures, not including human remains and associated funerary objects. As with museums globally, the key here is the forging and maintenance of relationships between whānau, hapū and iwi on the one hand, and museums on the other. These need to be meaningful, and shift beyond consultation towards partnership. Increasing numbers of Māori are being employed within the GLAM (galleries, libraries, art galleries and museums) sector in roles which see them in positions of power and governance, as well as on the ground as archivists, collection managers and team leaders. At Auckland War Memorial Museum Tamaki Paenga Hira, for instance, the executive team includes a Tumuaki Director, Māori Projects and Development (a post currently held by Linnae Pohatu), and they are supported by a Māori Advisory Board called the Taumata-a-Iwi, which includes representatives from local iwi and that was established by legislation in 1996. At Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, the Māori advisory board Haerewa has been active for over 20 years advocating for a strong Māori presence in all aspects of the gallery. Both institutions believe strongly in the pivotal role that iwi must have in relation to their taonga tuku iho in order to enhance and support Māori aspirations on a wider community level.
Globally, indigenous peoples have sought the return of their cultural heritage to their own turangawaewae (homelands). In particular, they have focused on the repatriation of human remains. Their ancestors were removed for a variety of reasons; the rise of sciences such as phrenology, craniology and physical anthropology required ‘specimens’ from the cultures which the Europeans encountered and soon colonised. Tens of thousands of human remains were collected over the course of the nineteenth century alone, and deposited in museums for the purposes of research. Such scientists were often the direct beneficiaries of colonial success in war: when colonial troops won battles, often they would send body parts to museums for study. In one case, the heads of thousands of Cheyenne people were sent through to the Surgeon General of the American army for his ‘Indian Cranial Study’.9 They had been killed by the US Cavalry led by a Methodist minister at Sandy Creek in Colorado in 1884; 4,500 were collected in the name of science. By the late nineteenth century such collecting was being considered less tasteful, and so we note a gradual change in terminology to categorising such human remains as ‘artefacts’. This not only included the actual physical remains, but also objects made from human bone, such as fish-hooks etc., as well as associated funerary objects. By the 1920s there was a rise in specific dealers trading in human remains.
Grave-robbing has always been a secretive affair as it is universally seen as a crime. However, international calls for the return of human remains and funerary objects only became more vocal from the 1960s. At this time, indigenous peoples began to advocate more effectively for their sovereignty. In tandem with this, they began to call for the return of their cultural objects removed from their communities. They formed groups, on a tribal, national and international level, which began to inform the public of their concerns. By the late 1980s a number of countries began addressing this in legislation which called for museums in particular to identify human remains and funerary objects in their collections. The next step was their return.
In Australia, the removal of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander remains began soon after colonisation in 1788. The use of the term ‘Old People’ to refer to human remains in Australia provides some insight into the ways in which indigenous peoples there consider them as very much a part of their families and genealogies. A recent report described how ‘Old People were unlawfully removed from burial grounds, hospitals and morgues to be sent to museums, universities and private collections in Australia and overseas’.10 In particular, the Report noted how Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples were ‘targeted and subsequently murdered for their remains’.11 From the 1980s onwards their calls were answered and repatriation began from Australian museums.
Currently there are two programmes focused on repatriation in Australia, one for domestic, and another for international. Museums now acknowledge their responsibility to identify human remains in their collections and to de-accession them to their descendants. To date there have been several successful repatriations, from both overseas and national collections. In the case of the Tasmanian woman Truganini, her people were deliberately targeted for genocide in the 1830s by new white settlers, and she survived with few of her community left. When she died, her body was dissected and her skeleton put on display in the Tasmanian Museum. Following lobbying by several groups, her remains were finally returned to her people in 1976 when she was cremated and her ashes spread close to her birthplace. Curators and conservators in many museums and other institutions struggle with the idea of letting go of human remains. For many of them who may have spent their professional career ‘preserving’ these Old People, they find it difficult to reconcile this with the wishes of the community who might arrive at the airport with a pickup truck, place the remains in the back, and drive off with intentions to provide appropriate death ceremonies according to their culture. This might mean burial. It might mean cremation. It might mean a lot of things. But what is important is that it is for the community to decide. The museums and institutions, in relinquishing custodianship over the remains, need to also have a shift in attitude to letting things go. For indigenous people, often they do not care what these museums think in terms of this – what is important is that they are in charge now.
In the United States the identification and return of human remains of native peoples is governed by the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act 1990 (also known as NAGPRA). As with other countries, human remains made their way into public and private collections through a number of means. The term ‘cultural genocide’ is frequently used to describe the wholesale obliteration of tribes and communities. Their bones were often collected and sent to museums and other repositories for study, resulting in what one advocate has described thus: ‘By the early twentieth century, it was grimly joked that the Smithsonian Institution in Washington had more dead Indians than there were live Indians.’12 The passing of the NAGPRA legislation was the culmination of a generation’s worth of lobbying by Native American groups for the return of their ancestors. The 1969 publication of Vine Deloria’s book Custer Died for Your Sins was a major turning point in the relationship between Natives and anthropologists. This book made clear that Natives distrusted many in academia and science. During the 1970s Native peoples in groups such as the American Indian Movement vented their frustration at a lack of respect for themselves and their ancestors by stopping archaeological excavations and occupying the Southwest Museum in Los Angeles in 1971. They made clear that such excavations had no benefit to the descendants of those whom the archaeologists dug up. By the 1980s museums began to broker contact with tribes and negotiate clear lines of communication between the two. In this climate the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act 1990 and National Museum of the American Indian Act 1989 were enacted.
The aim of the law is to protect burial sites, sacred objects and funerary objects on federal and tribal lands. It also bans the trafficking of skeletal remains. In addition it calls for human remains and funerary objects in museums and federal agencies to be returned to tribes. It also directs them to provide detailed inventories to tribes of skeletal remains and associated objects. There remain ongoing issues with the process of the legislation in that museums can retain remains if they are part of a scientific study, the remains found on private land are not protected, and it does not cover those remains which are not culturally identifiable with any specific tribe.
In 2000, Devon Mihesuah judged there to be 1,000,000 Native American human remains in public and private institutions.13 This does not include those in private hands, nor those overseas, such as in Britain or Japan or elsewhere. Some institutions, most notably the Smithsonian in Washington, have immense collections of human remains. It seems the pathway to full repatriation of human remains is still some way off.
This chapter has sought to highlight some of the complexities surrounding the making and circulation of art within Māori ways of thinking, and it is important to remember these histories as their legacies remain alive, in the taonga tuku iho, as well as in the minds of Māori today. Certainly as the financial value of such treasures increases within the auction circuit, we need to remain vigilant to the ways in which such movement can be tracked, especially through digital means. For Māori today, their relationships with taonga tuku iho in museums remains strong, and their rapport with these institutions is key to this success. With this in mind, below is a list of pointers in relation to how a collector or museum might deal with disputed taonga tuku iho:
There clearly remains much research to be undertaken in relation to art crime involving Māori communities, and while this chapter has addressed looting and illicit antiquities, much more needs to be understood in relation to forgery, for instance, and vandalism. Certainly in this era of cultural redress, the issues associated with the misappropriation of culture remain a significant concern, particularly to our artists. The legacy of looting is still being felt today, as new research into the nineteenth century is married with a willingness of museums to open their doors and allow more detailed provenance research on taonga in their collections to be undertaken, particularly by tribal members. Such research can be painful as old wounds of intertribal battles are once again aired. Even two hundred years on, the scars are still as fresh, but nonetheless this is our history. This is the fabric of our present, and how we gain strength from it relies on our being open about the pain. Our role as kaitiaki or guardians of those taonga is as important as ever. We need to ensure that those parts of our history are not repeated. That is our responsibility to future generations.
Ma pango, ma whero, ka oti te mahi: Many hands make light work.
Dr Ngarino Ellis has Māori affiliations to the tribes of Ngapuhi and Ngati Porou. She is a Senior Lecturer in Art History and Museums and Cultural Heritage at the University of Auckland, teaches Art Crime, and has published on many aspects of Māori and indigenous art.